Free Republic

Trump acknowledged that he “had a feeling that question was going to come up” and proceeded toe the liberal line of political correctness: “Well, look, North Carolina did something that was very strong and they're paying a big price and there's a lot of problems....People go, they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble.” ... Fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie turned to the subject of abortion: “The Republican platform, every four years, has a provision that states that the right of the unborn child shall not be infringed. And it makes no exceptions for...

A group of Harvard Law School activists are demanding the graduate school do away with tuition fees, which they argue are “racially biased.” Members of the group Reclaim Harvard Law School published an open letter Sunday addressed to Law School Dean Martha L. Minow and members of the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — demanding an end to tuition costs that they argue impose an unfair financial burden on students of color, The Harvard Crimson reported. Tuition at the law school will rise to $59,550 for the 2016-2017 academic year, and students are graduating with an average...

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent a great deal of time debating the merits of raising the minimum wage at the last Democratic debate on April 14. Sanders, ever the radical, stood behind the popular $15 minimum wage figure that will soon take hold in California and New York. Clinton, who's long pushed for $12, updated her position in support of $15 figure. Both could be misguided. While raising the minimum wage does make sense on paper — working people need to make more to survive than they can on today's minimum wage, so we should give them more money...

An estimated 45.3% of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax ... The top 1% of taxpayers pay a higher effective income-tax rate than any other group (around 23%, according to a report released by the Tax Policy Center in 2014) — nearly seven times higher than those in the bottom 50%. On average, those in the bottom 40% of the income spectrum end up getting money from the government. Meanwhile, the richest 20% of Americans, by far, pay the most in income taxes, forking over nearly 87% of all the income tax...

WASHINGTON - Almost everyone agrees that America's income tax is too complex. Considering this, you might expect that simplifying the income tax would be a slam dunk. Sure enough, the various presidential candidates have proposed sweeping overhauls. But any agreement is mostly rhetorical. The odds that the next president, whoever it be, will engineer genuine tax simplification are negligible. On this Tax Day, it's worth pondering why. Make no mistake: I think we'd be better off with a simpler system. By this, I mean a system with a broader tax base and lower rates. I'd eliminate most tax preferences and...

Make no mistake here. Cruz is proposing a VAT add-on to the existing personal income tax system.

If you’ve ever paid taxes, you probably agree that the tax code is entirely too complicated. To that end, you would probably also enjoy having a simple, easy-to-understand one-page form that you can fill out in about ten minutes and be done with your taxes. For what it’s worth, the Tax Man agrees with you. I don’t have many nice things to say about IRS Commissioner John Koskinen (in fact, Congress should impeach him…), but when asked at a Congressional hearing this week about the flat tax, this was his response: Clearly, if you had a two-page form or a...

Tax Reform: The left is aghast that more than 20% of large, profitable corporations paid zero income taxes. But it’s the Democrats’ own tax policies that have created this odd situation.

President Barack Obama is making sure that his administration spends its last days in power by piling on more rules and regulations on private industry, and Republicans have failed to push back. That’s the message from publisher Steve Forbes in a magazine editorial published on its website. “The Obama Administration has let it be known that the White House and the regulatory agencies will be issuing a blizzard of new rules and decrees in the waning months of his miserable regime,” Forbes writes. “These will affect overtime, unionization, the environment and finance, among other areas, thereby hobbling enterprise even more.”...

MPs have called for the Prime Minister to 'resign immediately' after being 'less than honest' about profiting from his Dad's offshore firm. MPs have demanded David Cameron's immediate resignation, after being "less than 100% honest" about profiting from his father's offshore fund. The Prime Minister finally cracked tonight after days of dodging questions over whether he had personally profited from his late father Ian’s investment firm, which was based in a tax haven in the Bahamas. He admitted owning thousands of shares with wife Sam which he flogged for £30,000 just weeks before he became Prime Minister.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday couldn't agree that federal debt is a national security problem, in a hearing aimed at assessing the long-term strategic implications of the government's $19 trillion debt. "A realistic discussion about it, and accepting expert opinion that this debt that we have is not actually right now a threat to our country, is I think a more realistic and honorable way of talking to the American people about it," Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday. That surprised committee chairman Bob Corker, who concluded the hearing by describing such views...

Russia has deployed hundreds of troops for drills in Central Asia with its ex-Soviet allies in a show of force as anxiety grows over a surge in fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan. Around 2,500 personnel from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are taking part in joint exercises due to run to Wednesday in Tajikistan. The move is seen as re-enforcing Moscow's role as the main guarantor of the fragile region's security after US troops leave Afghanistan. The Russian deployment of about 500 troops for the drills started last week, bolstered by soldiers from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus....

Even small differences in economic growth make a big difference to living standards over time. I frequently share this chart, which highlights how long it takes to double economic output based on different growth rates. I also use real-world examples to show how some nations become much richer than other nations within just a few decades because of better policy and faster growth.HereÂ’s another way to approach the issue. LetÂ’s use a hypothetical example to reinforce the importance of growth. If we went back to 1870 and assumed our economyÂ’s nominal growth rate was one percentage point slower than it...

The political and military environment in Kazakhstan is deteriorating due to the efforts of pro-Russian activists. The activities of pro-Russian movements in Kazakhstan indicate a tremendous growth of the threat to the acting authority, which emerged in the last 18 months. Currently, Kazakhstan is ready for the repeat of the “Crimean scenario”. It could be triggered by domestic problems in the Russian Federation or a sudden change in the state regime of Kazakhstan. Such threats to Kazakhastan are driven both by its citizens, who are coming home having obtained combat experience in Donbas region, and the increased activities of Cossack...

The Income Tax: Root of all Evil by Frank Chodorov Foreword THIS WAS, to be sure, "the home of the free and the land of the brave." Americans were free simply because the government was too weak to intervene in the private affairs of the people it did not have the money to do so and they were brave because a free people is always venturesome. The obligation of freedom is a willingness to stand on your own feet. The early American wanted it that way. He was wary of government, especially one that was out of his reach. He...

Cruz addresses a major reason for our trade deficit. However ... If something confuses people? It invites corruption. A handy rule of thumb in government. Are VATs confusing? Very. ~~~ Even explaining a VAT* is tough because there are many different kinds. Some alleged VATs aren't even VATs according to many. But I'll break it down into two categories: 1. A good VAT. 2. A bad VAT. ~~~ A Good VAT Senator Cruz proposes 'turning the tables' on Europe and other nations which are sneaking money back to corporations which give them jobs. In the nutshell, a good 'VAT' is...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled-down Sunday night on his comments that the US should “do a better deal” with Japan, South Korea and other allies, saying they should pay more for America’s protection while taking a greater role in their defense — including building their own nuclear weapons "If you start raising that minimum wage, you're going to make a lot of our companies even more non-competitive," he said. Trump also delved into his plans to change the nation's tax code by "simplifying" it. He also renewed his promise to repeal ObamaCare — though he again wouldn’t offer specifics...

Gone are the days of sophisticated tax plans offered by international accounting and law firms to their wealthiest clients which the IRS, with the benefit of hindsight, categorized as “tax shelters”. So why is Commissioner Koskinen raising the flag upside-down in a signal of distress in March of 2016? Tax practitioners all around the country know exactly why. Too many taxpayers and a handful of unscrupulous “tax practitioners” are taking advantage of the almost absolute absence of tax enforcement by the IRS. Yes, “Joe the plumber” and other average taxpayers know that no-one is minding the store. What happens when...

His newest foreign policy advisor, Frank Gaffney, is a key player in the effort to remove Grover Norquist from the organization's board. Ted Cruz named Frank Gaffney his foreign policy advisor on Thursday, a move that threatens to involve the Republican presidential contender in a contentious fight to get the party's most prominent anti-tax advocate kicked off the National Rifle Association's board. Gaffney once worked for President Ronald Reagan's Department of Defense and now runs the Center for Security Policy, a hyper-conservative think tank that promulgates theories about a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to infiltrate the U.S. government. The Southern Poverty...

It's America's favorite pander. Pledging to abolish the Internal Revenue Service is only slightly less attractive than promising unlimited, consequence-free sex with the partners of our choice. Nobody likes the IRS, and eliminating it entirely will surely resolve many, many sleepless nights for too many Americans, especially at this time of year. So, it's no wonder why Ted Cruz is promising to abolish the IRS. It's such a crucial aspect of his platform that he mentioned it twice during his Super Tuesday victory speech in Texas because, for middle-aged Republican voters, it's way better fapping material than naked pics of...